Barry Wellman S.D
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Centre for Urban and UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO Community Studies RESEARCH ASSOCIATE Barry Wellman S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, University of Toronto Director, NetLab, Centre for Urban and Community Studies International Coordinator, International Network for Social Network Analysis Steering Committee Member and Research Associate, Knowledge Media Design Institute [KMDI], University of Toronto Chair-Emeritus and Council Member, Communication and Information Technologies section American Sociological Association Address: Centre for Urban and Community Studies, University of Toronto, 455 Spadina Ave., Toronto M5S 2G8. Tel: 416-978-3930; Fax: 416-978-7162; E-mail: [email protected]; Website: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman Barry Wellman studies networks: community, communication, computer, and social. His research examines virtual community, the virtual workplace, social support, community, kinship, friendship, and social network theory and methods. He directs the NetLab, teaches in the Department of Sociology, conducts research at the Knowledge Media Design Institute, and the Bell University Laboratories’ Collaborative Environment Lab, and is a cross-appointed member of the Faculty of Information Studies. Much of Professor Wellman’s current work is studying interrelationships between the Internet, society and community. His research group is studying how loosely coupled organizations use computer-mediated communication as virtual workgroups; the design of ad hoc networking systems in which people work and find community with shifting sets of others; how scholarly communities (“invisible colleges”) exchange knowledge; the online and offline life of residents of “Netville,” a leading-edge wired suburb of Toronto; how the Internet affects linkages, social cohesion, and social inclusion within and between neighbourhoods, cities, regions, countries, and continents; and differences in Internet access and use within and between societies (the “digital divide”). Professor Wellman teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in urban sociology, community, social network analysis, information and communication technology and society, and research methods. Much of his current research focuses on computer networks as social networks. He is analyzing how people find community and accomplish work on and off the Internet. Professor Wellman is chair-emeritus of both the Community and Information Technologies section and the Community and Urban Sociology section of the American page 2 Sociological Association. He has been a Fellow of IBM’s Institute of Knowledge Management, a consultant with Mitel Networks, a member of Advanced Micro Devices' Global Consumer Advisory Board, a keynoter at conferences ranging from computer science to theology, and a committee member of the Social Science Research Council’s (and Ford Foundation’s) Program on Information Technology, International Cooperation and Global Security. He is the (co-)author of about 300 articles that have been co- authored with more than eighty scholars, and the (co-)editor of three books. Professor Wellman received an Outstanding Lifetime Contribution Award from the Canadian Sociological and Anthropological Association in 2001. He has also received Outstanding Lifetime Contribution Awards from two sections of the American Sociological Association: Communication and Information Technologies (2004) and Community and Urban Sociology (2006). The Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto honored him in April 2001, with a “Barryfest” conference: “Social Structure in a Changing World – Presentations in Honour of Barry Wellman.” In 2006, the Department awarded to him the S.D. Clark endowed chair. Since the late 1960s, Professor Wellman has developed the study of communities as social networks: demonstrating that communities are no longer limited to neighbourhoods. He has been studying the ways in which people use these ties to gain resources, and the implications of these networks for large-scale social organization. His current research in this area focuses on multilevel analyses of support and reciprocity in ties and networks in an era of “networked individualism”. He is now completing a long- term study of network-based personal communities in Toronto. Professor Wellman received his Honors B.A. in History from Lafayette College and his M.A in social relations and Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University. Selected publications The network is personal, Social Networks 29: forthcoming 2007. The immanent Internet, In J. McKay (ed.), Netting Citizens: Exploring Citizenship in a Digital Age, Edinburgh: St. Andrew Press, 2004, pp. 54−80 Co-author: B. Hogan. The Internet in everyday life, Oxford: Blackwells, 2002. Co-editor: with C. Haythornthwaite. Networks in the global village. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1999. (editor). Social structures: A network approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Co-editor: S. D. Berkowitz. Updated edition Elsevier-JAI, 1997. For a complete list of publications, go to: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman. 2/2007 .